BEGINNERS!! LOWER REPS FOR HIGHER GAINS!!

“Movements or exercises that do not give the muscles the required resistance, but are the kind that involve a great number of repetitions, never break down any tissue, to speak of. These movements involve a forcing process that cause the blood to swell up the muscles, and simply pump them up.”
-George F. Jowett, The Key to Might and Muscle, 1926

I’m often confronted with questions about “how many repetitions should  i be doing if I’m trying to…..”  (build mass, lean out,ect) and the answer i give is often counter to what these people have been fed in the larger publications that are available on your news stand or larger commercial fitness sites. 

Now this information that i sharing here is really based more towards the beginner/novice fitness enthusiast looking to establish a solid foundation on which to build upon and there are tons of variables that we can factor in when you’ve gained the experience needed to do so but what i will tell you from my  own experience is to allow yourself time to learn and be a novice and don’t rush to gain “false progress”. When i teach Muay Thai i always joke with my students about allowing themselves to be bad at something for a little while and enjoy the learning process. This information here i will put under the same category.

Low reps training is superior to High rep when it comes to building muscle, and gaining power in “non-scientifically enhanced” athletes and lifters largely due to providing the needed overload of the musclulo-skeletal system and requiring the CNS (central nervous system) to have to adapt and utilize a higher number of motor units.The term motor units refers to the actual amount of muscle fibers being recruited by the “motor neurons”, the higher number of motor units recruited the more power we can generate per contraction of a particular muscle. Now this isn’t always in correlation to “size”. a person can have huge muscles but still not be able to generate force optimally. In this we often here the complaint, not to sound chauvinistic often from women “i don’t want to get BIG!!” Size and strength are not always indicative of each other and to put it plain and simple, WEAK DOESN’T WORK!!  I have several female clients that way anywhere between 115lb to 135lb who are able to deadlift there body weight plus for 5 repetitions and in all honest because women tend to have better fine motor skills than men they achieve gains quicker then my male clients……. o.k., they also listen and take direction a lot better as well.

Now anyone who has trained or knows me understands that i’m a big believer in Pareto’s 80/20 principle and how it applies to fitness. In this I’m simply saying that 80% of your gains and progress are derived from 20% of your movements. As humans we have 4 basic movement substrates at our disposal, we can run, jump, climb and crawl basing or exercises around these let’s see what we have.

• Run / Jump- Squat- maximizing the ability to transfer power from your hips and legs into the floor under you.
• Run/Jump- Deadlift- maximizing the ability to extend your hips and posterior chain again to transfer that power through the floor.
• Climb- Pull Up- being able to recruit enough power from the torso (latisimus dorsi/ rhomboids).in order to elevate your body
• Crawl- Push up- Although this may seem like a way to simple of an exercise it is all to often that i see this one done with bad form. in order to really do a solid push up it requires that that whole body work in unison to stabilize as well as produce motion. I personally believe that the bench press is a secondary motion and tend not to prioritize it in my own programming. you may think different and that’s all good.

Now using these for basic motions you have the makings of a dynamite training program. i know that a lot of you might be thinking”where are the bi-cep curls, leg extensions, and lateral deltoid raises??” Again those are secondary and even in my opinion tertiary movements and  i like i  said 80/20 rule applies so we only want to get into the multi joint movements that are going to require more muscle groups effect our bodies in the desired fashion.

                            5X5 TRAINING

This concept in training is one of the best and most fundamental there is. is yields relatively quick gains and as you are not training to “failure” there is a lower risk of injury. Firstly you don’t want to just dive into doing your 85% 1 rm (85% of your one estimated one rep maximum is what you should be able to do for 5 repetitions) without a proper warm up so i would suggest that you do 2 warm up sets at 65%  1 rm at 12 repetitions, these are exactly that “warm up sets” your are priming your CNS to do a specific task so they should not be strenuous. between the warm up sets i suggest 2 minutes rest in which i also suggest you do some kind of movement work to keep your mobility and flexibility, again this should not be strenuous.

once you gotten the warm up sets finished you should increase your rest period to a minimum of 3 minutes allowing for proper recuperation so that every seth you feel strong. Again, i cannot stress enough  that each rep should be solid with good form and you should not go to failure. When i use this method on myself i tend to do 2 sessions per week but that is also because my priorities are usually Muay thai or Jiu Jitsu so they are my focus but if you wanted to do 1 movement 5-6 days a week you could do that for a period and get significant gains but keep in mind that what you’re doing in the gym is only the set up for the important stuff done during rest and recuperation.

Again, i here some of you saying “WOW! that’ a lot of time to dedicate to just one exercise!!” it’s only a small amount of time in the gym and considering that what you do outside the gym is actually going to have a larger effect on your results it’s well worth training your body in this manor. I’ve had awesome results with clients from only 2 movements in the whole session for  6 to sometimes 10 weeks. My clients have gotten stronger,leaner, and more importantly have not gotten injured in the process which is very important.  

i really hope this helps some of you and again, if you have questions feel free to hit me up. If i don’t know the answer then WE will find it together and we both get to learn!!

DO AWESOME THINGS!!! 

WHAT IS YOUR “WHY”?? ( a reason for everything)

we all have reasons that we walking the path we’ve chosen, or should i say we all “should have a reason”. What to i mean by a reason? This question would seem rather obvious but i find that a lot of people seem to loose vision or displace there purpose for doing what they’re doing. With out a reason for doing something there really is no purpose in it and if there’s no purpose then i feel it’s kind of a waste of time to partake in whatever that is.

What am i getting at here?? Easy, why are you doing what you’re doing? is there a “pay off” and is it getting you closer to where you feel you deserve to be? In short don’t do something for nothing!!!!!  

We see this all the time in gyms, dojos, and in life. People doing something not because they know it’ll get them the truly desired results but just because they want to be able to tell them selves that they accomplished something, when in all actuality they just going through the motions devoid of passion and purpose. 

WHAT IS YOUR WHY???? What do i mean when i say this??? I know it sounds odd but it’s a very poignant question. Why are you doing what you are doing and will it eventually get you to the next positive position in your journey towards an eventual goal? Everyone has a WHY, deep down inside, that one thing that drives you. If you don’t have a WHY then i really suggest you do some evaluation of what you are doing and what you hope to achieve in you period of allotted time that your spending here with us on this planet. Seriously!!! Life without a WHY,  a purpose and reason, whether it be short term or long term, really is an existence not only devoid of true life but is a horrible disservice to everyone around you that you love (i’ll get into this in a bit).

Now i know that some of you are now thinking “Uh Gavin, what the hell does this have to do with fitness, strength and conditioning, exercise, blabitty,blah blah…..” It has a lot to do with it in all actuality because i find that a lot of people tend to train how they live. It reflects a lot about a person and it is truly an expression of ones self.

How many times have you seen someone come onto a training floor walk through a bunch of non sequential exercises checking there texts every minute or so then get on a stationary bike or elliptical with a magazine and spend maybe 10 minutes meandering through it’s pages, with one eye still checking texts and the clock waiting for this to be over so they can get out of there. I’m not trying to judge people who do this but maybe if they found something they enjoyed doing for exercise they would actually get some enjoyment out of what they were doing and in tern be more focus on it hence getting them what they wanted out of it whether it be weight loss, stress release or whatever. face it, training  in a gym can be monotonous. it takes focus and drive to stay on track with your program because in my opinion that kind of exercise is UNNATURAL!!! I’ve said it before and i’ll say t once more, We are the only animal on the planet that chooses to exercise in a SET AND REPS MODALITY!! Dogs don’t, Horses don’t, Mice don’t, None of the other beings on this planet do it just us!! Now i’m not going to go to  far into this because it’s a whole other topic but i’ll just say that the reason i choose to use this modality of training is to help to improve my favorite types of exercise which happen to be Ju jitsu and Muay thai (those are my PLAY!!) What i am getting at here is that we need to find our PLAY when it comes to exercise, that thing that brings us joy and actually evokes a feeling that “THIS IS AWESOME, I WANT TO DO LOTS OF THIS, AND I WANT TO DO IT TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY.” I think that if this same person were to actually find that thing that they actually enjoyed doing as a form of exercise it would reflect throughout there lives. I’ve told both clients and students (there is a difference) “If i can find something that your letting go slack in your training then i can usually find a dozen things that your doing out side the gym that are preventing you from getting where you want to be.” Remove these obstacles and we get closer to our goals. If your not enjoying what you’re doing for exercise then get out there and find a ”form of play” that brings you  that feeling that i described above.

We need more of this in our lives in general, not just from exercise but from music and art and especially in our relationships with each other. It’s my own personal belief that the more people step up and start to live with this kind of conviction and passion it might just inspire more people to do the same. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO BE MEDIOCRE!!!! It doesn’t make sense!! Oh and i’m not talking about what other people think but be honest with your self. Are you living up to your best capabilities?? Are you giving your self every chance to succeed and actually get what you feel you deserve in life. We all deserve to be happy….. are you giving yourself the opportunities to have that happiness? I feel that if more people did AWESOME things for themselves to gain that happiness others would see it’s possible and follow suit. It’s infectious!!

As i started of saying “what is your WHY??” Every body has a WHY and everybody WHY is a little bit different but what makes them all the same is that we wish to fell good about ourselves whatever our accomplishment and that is what brings it together. We are all chasing our WHYS. We all feel that our WHYS are great. “GREAT THINGS CANNOT BE ATTAINED THROUGH MEDIOCRE ACTIONS!!”  Do what you consider to be great things and the WHY will reveal itself as a byproduct of that great action you’ve taken

LOVE WHAT YOU DO!!!

                                                                        WHAT’S NEXT???

what are we doing? are we putting everything we have into it? i mean heart,soul, passion. is why you are doing something standing way out over every other reason to do other things that would require this time. are you willing to give your all to accomplish the things that you really deserve? it would make you happy and i believe that we all deserve that.

Now let’s break this down to your exercise regime or martial arts training. are you giving everything you have to improve each time you step into that arena? if you’re not doing it there then we can probably find a dozen other things that you are not doing outside of it that are blocking you from getting what you want. are you treating each rep or movement as if they were the MOST IMPORTANT thing you will ever do. let’s look at it from this angle, in that moment that is all that truly exists so there for,YOU DAMN WELL SHOULD!! 

this  moment, rep, technique that you do should be treated as if they are the one the you will be judged on. if you’re letting this moment be that one where you “take it easy” then as i said before, why other parts of your life are you letting “go slack” as well. if we tighten up these moments as well imagine the amount of improvement we’d see in just our day to day life.

here’s what i’m asking,  what is the most important meal you’re going to eat? what is the most important sleep you’ll ever have? what is the most important set of drills or exercises you are ever going to do??? THE NEXT ONE!! Yes, that’s right. the next meal? you get to decide weather you’re going to eat enough of the right things to get you to feel good and get yourself to the weight and size you want to be at. the next sleep?? are you doing the right things to make sure that you go uninterrupted for 7-9 hours of deep solid sleep. is the room at the correct temperature (65 degrees), is the room devoid of light and any electro magnetic devices (shut of the computer and phone). is it dark!! the next exercise or drill? are you focused on your technique, focused on what you are doing with in that moment to make sure that you’re sending your brain the correct messages to accomplish what you are trying to do right now (this could be applied across the board).

why is this important?? because you deserve to be happy for one and all of these things will get you just that much closer to what it is that you are working towards. Secondly, these types of things are infectious . if other see you driving yourself towards what you want, do things to accomplish your goals then they just might take it up in there own lives as well and in this you are fulfilling what i consider to be our prime objective as humans on this planet, TO BE OF SERVICE TO ONE ANOTHER!! on the other hand if your friends and people around you see that you’re not trying to give it your all then they might also figure that what they want can be attained through “half-assery” as well and follow suit. THIS IS A HORRIBLE DISSERVICE TO THE HUMAN RACE!!

What we need is more AWESOME PEOPLE doing AWESOME THINGS for themselves as to inspire others to do the same and that starts with the NEXT ACTION YOU TAKE.    

recently i’ve been getting a lot of questions about torso/core/abs training in relation to athletics, especially in the format of combat sports. these also are coming , not surprisingly, from subjects who seem to be trying to correct issues that are effecting their performance due to pain/discomfort in the lower thoracic/lumbar region ( between the lowest ribs and sacrum). more times than not i’ve found after going through a brief screening that the issue is not directly caused by the muscles in that region being weak, but due to other muscle groups not “contributing” to the work that needs to be done in order for, let’s call it for now, “the abdominal belt” to function at it’s most optimal.

in this blog i want to just address the transverse abdominis. The traverse abdominis is a muscle layer of the anterior and lateral abdominal wall which is deep to the internal oblique. It is thought to be a major muscle of the functional core of the human body, although some argue that due to its small cross-sectional area, it cannot generate the forces required to be a prime core stabilizer.  but to also 

below is an article about how to incorporate “TA” training into your regime in order to not just help develop a tighter “core” but to also incorporate these concepts to assist in improving your athletic endeavors over all.  

i really hope this helps you get where you want to get to.

                            “ARE YOU DOING YOUR ABDOMINAL TRAINING WRONG”

by: Mike Boyle

After listening to a recent lecture by Mike Clark whose wisdom on back pain is recorded elsewhere in this edition, I quickly realized that I had fallen behind on how we train the abdominal area of our athletes.

At his lecture Clark explains, you need to teach athletes to use their transverse abdominus to “draw in” their abs.  The transverse abdominus had been previously regarded as a little used, deep abdominal muscle. 

It was referred to as the transversalis and was basically ignored in Gray’s Anatomy.  Now Australian researchers have told us that the transverse abdominus and the multifidus (another ignored muscle) were the keys to unlocking the cure for back pain.

“OK,” I wondered, “what actually is “drawing-in” and how do I teach it to 300 athletes daily?

My answer came partly, from all places, a magazine for pregnant women.  They have been taught the concept of “drawing-in” for much longer than those of us in the athletic world have ever known the concept existed.  Postpartum therapists realize the importance of using and strengthening the transverse abdominus because of its importance in the childbirth process.

To teach the concept of “drawing-in” we began with a couple of analogies and an exercise taken from Yoga called the Angry Cat.  In this position (See Fig. 1) the weight of the internal organs cause the internal organs to weigh down against the rectus abdominus.(See Fig. 2)  We put our athletes in the Angry Cat position and instruct them to “draw-in” by using one of three analogies.

(1) Pull your bellybutton through to your back.
(2) Envision trying to get through a tight area between two objects at waist height.
(3) Or, for our female clients, envision trying to zip up America’s tightest pair of pants.

After this we progress to three exercises that we simply call Lying Draw-In, Seated Draw-In and Standing Draw-In.

Lying Draw-In
(Fig. 3) - We use an object such as two hockey pucks taped together too visually reinforce the action of drawing-in.  The athlete
is instructed to lie on the back and draw the pucks down into the abdomen without initiating a crunching action.  The key is to learn to fire the transverse abdominus without firing the rectus.

Seated Draw-In
(Fig. 4) - Performed seated on the stability ball.  Wrap a 48” length of rope around the waist.  Hold the right end of the rope in the left hand and left end of the rope in the right hand so that the rope is wrapped around the waist.  From this position try to “draw-in” away from the rope.  The cue here is to make yourself as tall and thin as possible.  Use the rope to reinforce the “draw-in” action.

Standing Draw-In - Perform same as seated.  Cue “tall and thin”.  This is the most functional position. As you “draw-in” gently pull the rope tighter.  This will teach your athletes to understand the concept.
Try these techniques with your athletes to help them understand a critical, but difficult concept and watch their posture improve their back pain decrease.

•  Physical Benefits Of Deadlifting
• Why Deadlift? To us asking that is akin to asking Why Breathe? The Deadlift is one of the most ancient, fundamental and just flat out alpha lifts out there. In no other lift do you raise hundreds of pounds of weight off the ground with your bare hands. There’s really something magical about the Deadlift. You just don’t feel the same amount of confidence and joy doing Squats or Bench Pressing as you do while Deadlifting. There’s a reason so many people look forward to Deadlift day.
  What Muscles Does the Deadlift Work
  The primary of deadlifting are increased strength,power and over all muscle tone (in this i mean increase motor unit recruitment). Since the deadlift is a compound movement it utilizes nearly every major muscle of your body:
  • Spinal Erectors
  • Quads
  • Glutes
  • Hamstrings
  • Lower Back
  • Middle and Upper Trapezius
  • Abdominals and Obliques
  • Lats
  • Calves
  So doing one deadlift is almost like doing In a leg presses, a hip extension, knee extension, an abdominal crunch, a gripping exercise, a straight-arm pull down and a shrug all at the same time. hands down, one of the best compound lifts if not THE BEST .
  Another great reason for deadlifting is testosterone and growth hormone release. Studies have shown that compound lifts like the deadlift use the most muscle groups and thus release the most of these 2 crucial chemical compounds. This applies to women as well. increased testosterone and growth hormone help to increase LEAN MUSCLE MASS thus helping to burn unwanted fat.
                                    Other Deadlifting Benefits
• • Deadlifting helps to increase stability control. in using machines to “isolate” and “target” (a totally obsolete concept) individual muscles you remove the the proprioceptive qualities and stabilizing factors that we not only need in day to day life but also add to our over all strength. the deadlift also involves supplementary and minor stabilizer muscles that are usually ignored by the mainstream. The lack of training of these stabilizer muscles will lead to imbalances and can lead a person to be more susceptible to injury and over all lack of athleticism.
  • Another huge benefit from deadlifting is increased grip strength. Since the deadlift is one of the few exercises where you must manually hold hundreds of pounds of weight, it is one of the best exercises for increasing grip strength and strengthening the forearms. Increased grip strength will then aid to improve other lifts like the pull up.
  • Deadlifting is also one the few exercises out there with real world application. Pickup weights off the ground is something we’ve been doing for millennia and is exactly what the deadlift trains the body to do.
  • If performed correctly the deadlift also strengthens the spine and can lead to better posture. People with lordosis or excessive curving of the spine can benefit from the deadlift as it will help fix their posture by strengthening their lower back muscles, as well as the core, and by ironing out any lower back imbalances.
  • Cardio. The only two exercises to really make someone light headed are Deadlifts and Squats. Deadlifting really taxes your cardiovascular system, as you already know, or will soon find out. (Pro tip: Make sure you have somewhere to sit down after deadlifting).

Some uneducated people and crappy gyms  will try and tell you the Deadlift is not a good exercise, and that it’s dangerous, and that you shouldn’t do it. That’s not true at all. Driving a car is dangerous, yet we still do it. Why? Because we learn how to do it first. So read up on this technique or if you can, make the investment in yourself and get with a solid strength and conditioning coach to learn this lift and how to apply it to your current training program. 

LET’S FACE iT, EXERCISE IS UNNATURAL!!! Humans are the only animal on the planet that I know of that “exercises”!! I mean that we design our programs and map out what we plan to do. We use set and reps paradigms, we employ “volume training”, we periodize. Ask a dog what his 5rm is!!! He’ll probably bring you a ball and just have you throw it till he’s tired out rest and when he’s good and ready bring that spit covered orb back to you and drop it in your lap. Do not get me wrong. I work in the exercise and fitness field and believe that I’ve had a very positive influence on both my clients,peer group and community with the services that I offer but what I do is only an ingredient to a bigger concept…. MOVEMENT!!!!

Exercise should be utilized to enhance movements of play. the 2 are not exactly the same. Surely extension of your knee joint is “movement” but what i am referring to would be more along the lines on  climbing a tree for instance. if your idea of play is to climb a tree then if wanted to improve this mode of play it would be a good idea to do exercises that would improve climbing trees as well as just CLIMBING MORE TREES!  this of course is arbitrary and i am only using this as an example because i have no idea what your “play of choice “exactly is but what ever it is i’m pretty sure that there are plenty of drills and exercises that you could use to make you able to do that mode of play for longer, faster, and also safer.

now let’s say that, heavens forbid, one day you fall out of the tree and you injure yourself . Now there are lots of great exercises that you can use to help yourself get healed up, and moving better so that you can get back up your trees. these are great, we have the ability to understand how to heal ourselves thankfully but the concept that i’m getting at here is these should be a means to a ends not the END ALL AND BE ALL as far as holistic fitness and well being goes.

We need to find what we consider play and go after it. use  it to enhance our lives and give us passion in pursuing the mastery of it, although we may never attain that mastery the path towards that is a reward unto it self.

GET OUT THERE AND PLAY AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED UPON IT BECAUSE IT DOES!!! 

YOU CAN LIVE WITH OUT EXERCISE BUT YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MOVEMENT!!

make that movement your play and make play part of your life!

if you’re a New Yorker than as you know it a “walking city”. That is definitely one of the benefits to living here. it also throws a lot of stimulus your way as you are bombarded with advertisements. It’s currently what people in my field of work call “resolution rush time” and the fitness industry is out there trying to appeal to the masses to sign up as many of you to there facilities as possible with hope that not only will you purchase the membership but hopefully personal training, spa, clothing and anything else they can sell you. it seams that every year around this time they use the same techniques for lure people into the hopes of bulging biceps and six pack abs for guys and for women it would appear to me that emaciated is all the rage!! not just that but emaciated and subservient.

don’t get me wrong. i’m not at all “anti sex” on the contrary i’m a huge advocate but when your dressing it up in the guise of “fitness and wellness” then i have to say i have a problem. first off your not being honest or even selling an honest product.  first let us be honest with ourselves, Sex is one of the few things that, i believe i’m correct here, a larger majority of us desire. it’s kind if a no brainer. think abut it, if i was to stand in union square with a clip board and could get people to give me an honest answer to the question “would you like to have sex. not with me but with someone you are attracted to” i would have pages upon pages of names followed with a resounding “YES!!” on the other hand if i was to stand in the same location and ask the question “ARE YOU HAPPY WITH YOUR CURRENT PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL STATE AND ARE YOU WILLING TO TAKE THE NEXT YEAR TO MAKE THE BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATIONS TO IMPROVE THEM??” I think the “yes” count would be considerably lower.

what i’m trying to get at here is that what many of these companies are doing is selling a LIe!! i used to consult for one of the major fitness lifestyle gyms in the country and at one point i asked the person who i was working with there if she honestly felt that the current add campaign they were running wasn’t alienating more people than it was attracting do to the fact that every person on the posters were “model good looking” and she said “oh no not at all!! everyone in the campaign are actually 3@u!ñ0x members!!” at this point i felt angered that she really thought that i wasn’t aware that most high end fitness chains and even smaller boutique gyms will give out memberships to modeling agencies the same way that night clubs try to fill there rooms with “beautiful people”. especially since i knew that the original owners and founding family of this particular gym went directly to Ford, Wilhelmina, and several other prominent modeling agencies giving out memberships to give there facilities that exact air of “this is where beautiful people get beautiful”.

some of these ad campaigns are already under fire because the women in them really don’t even look like they could survive through a normal “fitness evaluation” which is something that most top trainers do before bring a client on to the training floor and i’m glad that women are speaking up about this and are tired of being represented in this light. i consider myself lucky to work with the female clients that i have and all of them are fairly well educated to how the industry play on the psyche and needles at a person inadequacies and individual dysmorphia, both male and female. they target your fear cause fear is a direct line to your wallet…… but that’s another rant.

if you’re not physically active i want you to ask yourself that second question. are you willing to take steps over the next month towards getting yourself in the physical, mental, and emotional balance that you believe would make you a happier person? all 3 of those things are intertwined within all of us. we’ve been led astray from what we deserve, we’ve been pushed and dragged away from the playground and told to chase intangible ghosts, and heave ourselves towards unattainable goals in a short amount of time. 6 MINUTE ABS ARE A FUCKING LIE FOLKS!! i want you all to live long productive and fulfilling lives and i believe that a persons play and fitness habits should be the same. take your time with it and enjoy the process. find what you consider to be “play” and do it to your hearts content. everything else is simply a byproduct  of this, the increased stamina, lower body fat, muscles. those will arrive if you take the steps towards finding WHAT YOU CONSIDER PLAY! GO OUT AND GET SOME!!!!!   (play that is!))

OVER TRAINING AND UNDER CONSUMPTION!!!!  they are perfect combination for failure. i see it on a regular basis in the competitive combat sports. Many young and inexperienced athletes take bad advice that is not founded in any kind of reality about the proper way to cut weight and combine that with the modern notion that you have  to “suffer” and go through some kind of “right of passage” on your way to fight weight. Don’t get me wrong here, training for any competitive event is tough and some periods might even make you question your resolve, sanity and actual desire to pursue your goal any further. What i’m trying to suggest here is that it doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it and that if we’re going to train as agressively as we do for these goals than we should also take full advantage to replenish out energy store and allow ourselves every advantage to recuperate that we can.

the first thing i want to address is that although you are burning calories while you’re training the larger majority of the calories you’re going to burn will be while your resting and sleeping. this in mind, the calories that you are burning while training are going to put you into a calorie deficit and though this is what is desired to lose weight it’s the calories that you burn during recovery that are the ones that matter here. that being said FUEL YOURSELF !!!! DO NOT GO INTO A HEAVY TRAING SESSION WITH NOTHING IN THE TANK!!!! Sure, plenty of us can get by on pure heart and fortitude but this is the wrong time for those kinds of qualities to be tested. you cannot be expected or expect yourself to have the mental focus to understand techniques and concepts of your specific sport if your brain is not firing on all cylinders. proper nutrition is tantamount to solid training!

O.k. let’s get into some solutions and stop yelling about all this!!

1) 2 a DAYS !!  training twice a day for a lot of us is a reality and actually preferred. this way we get time in between sessions to refuel & rest (if you can take a nap, PLEASE DO!! 15 minutes will do you wonders). after you train, both sessions, please get some kind of protein on either in the form of a whey protein shake or if you want something more organic nuts are great for this. as far as convenience you can buy a shaker for whey protein at your local vitamin shop and you can just put the powder in there and add water after your done training. super simple!!! for those of you who want to go with the nuts you can  buy bulk and prepackage your own or trader joes has several varieties of prepackaged nuts that you can purchase.

2) 1 session a day- This tends to be what happens to a lot of both amateur and even some pro and elite level athletes. being that your time is limited you only have one window of opportunity to train be it morning or evening that’s all you have time for. A lot of the time you tend to do training sessions that might run from 1 to even 3 hours. if you have the tendency to do the later i can’t stress enough how important “snacking” is to add into your regime. 

after 45 minutes of rigorous exercise your testosterone levels will tend to drop and this is bad because this is past the point of diminishing returns and it’s far worse to be overtrained than undertrained. one of the main points of exercise is to increase your testosterone levels and overtraining can decrease your testosterone for 1 to 4 day afterwards. Now if you’re training for any major competition or event more than likely you’re training 5 to 6 days on with 1 or 2 days off. if you do the math on this it shows how overtraining can become a slippery slope that can totally derail any hopes you might have of attaining your goal. add this flatlining of cortisol , to decreased testosterone levels and throw in a good amount of caloric deficit and it adds up to EPIC FAIL!!!  

“But i need to be in the gym/dojo for those hours in order to be ready!!” i here you scream. I fully understand that. what i’m getting at here is getting snack breaks in when you take breaks. These breaks don’t have to be totally inactive, you can work on movement and flexibility, substrates of larger techniques, or even breathing, meditation and visualization as your “T-LEVELS” get back in sync. during this this a quick 100-150 calorie snack to keep you fueled while you work makes total sense. In my opinion any coach/trainer/arjahn/sensie/sifu or what ever that would deny a hard working pupil/athlete a chance to re-up after or even during a hard training session isn’t worth training with and might be more of a liability to you than an asset.

i’m not going to try to over haul diets in this rant, i just wanted to tap you on the shoulder a give you a little advice that might help you succeed at this awesome goal that you are working so hard for. your body runs on fuel and food is that fuel. i am stupefied at guys who will go out and buy $250 gis for judo/jiu jitsu or a pair of equally priced gloves but will neglect there own bodies by putting not only subpar food into it but more often than not just not enough quality nutrition altogether.

i want you to get what your after because if you do this than others will see that it’s possible and you will inspire more people to chase after something fantastic and that’s something that i personally believe will make the whole planet a better place but it starts small… as small as a snack. 

TRAIN PASSIONATELY AND TRAIN SMART, IT’S FAR STRONGER THAT JUST “TRAINING HARD!”

Chok Sabai competitor/ assistant instructor Naomi “Chopper” Cookson works on her metabolic training by doing intervals on the bag.
Intervals are both fun and challenging and can be programmed to be easier for beginners or you can deviate the work to rest ratio to increase the level of difficulty for more advanced players.